The first thing I saw was the sleeve.
It was lying on the carpet beside the bed, pale blue silk crumpled like a dead bird.
For a few seconds, my mind refused to understand what I was looking at.
I stood in the doorway of the guest dressing room with one hand resting beneath my six-month belly and the other still wrapped around the brass doorknob.
Then I saw the rest of the dress.
The skirt had been cut straight through from the hem almost to the waist.
One shoulder strap hung by three or four threads.
The delicate gathering beneath the bust—the part the seamstress had spent nearly an hour fitting so the fabric would fall comfortably over my growing stomach—had been sliced open.
Not torn.
Not snagged.
Cut.
Cleanly.
Deliberately.
“No,” I whispered.
The word came out so quietly that even I barely heard it.
The dress had been hanging inside the wardrobe less than forty minutes earlier.
I knew because I had checked it myself.
Tonight was the annual Whitmore family foundation gala, the kind of event Diane treated with more reverence than most people treated weddings. There would be photographers, business partners, old family friends, charity board members, and relatives who seemed to appear only when crystal glasses and expensive flowers were involved.
I had spent three weeks looking for something I could wear.
At six months pregnant, almost nothing in my closet fit properly anymore. I wanted to look elegant without pretending I wasn't pregnant, and I wanted—perhaps foolishly—to walk into that ballroom feeling like I belonged beside my husband instead of looking like the temporary outsider Diane had always treated me as.
The blue dress had been my one indulgence.
When I picked it up from the seamstress the previous afternoon, I had cried.
Not because it was extravagant.
Because when I looked at myself in the mirror, I recognized myself again.
I didn't see swollen ankles.
I didn't see the twenty-two pounds Diane had already commented on twice.
I didn't see the exhaustion beneath my eyes.
I saw a woman becoming a mother.
I saw myself looking beautiful.
And now the dress was destroyed.
I crossed the room and picked up the sleeve.
My hands began shaking.
There was no way this had happened accidentally.
“Anna?”
I turned.
Diane stood in the doorway.
My mother-in-law was already dressed for the gala in emerald green satin, diamond earrings catching the afternoon light.
Her eyes moved from my face to the dress.
She gasped.
“Oh my God.”
I stared at her.
“What happened?”
She entered slowly.
“What happened?” I repeated.
Diane pressed a manicured hand to her chest.
“I was about to ask you.”
I looked at the dress again.
“You were in here.”
Her expression changed by less than an inch.
“What?”
“Earlier. You said you were checking whether I needed anything.”
“I knocked on your door.”
“You came inside.”
“For thirty seconds.”
I remembered it perfectly.
I had been in the bathroom curling my hair when Diane stepped into the adjoining room.
She had called, “Anna?”
I answered that I was almost ready.
She told me not to rush because pregnancy had apparently made me “move like an old woman.”
Then she left.
At least I thought she had.
Diane bent toward the ruined dress but didn't touch it.
“Well,” she said, “there's no point standing here crying over it.”
